Government gender gap narrowing

Saturday

Mar 22, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 22, 2014 at 10:20 AM

Women are edging closer to pay equity with men in state government. The narrowing wage gap, however, appears to have more to do with a changing workforce than with any wide-ranging salary adjustments for female employees.

Alan Johnson, The Columbus Dispatch

Women are edging closer to pay equity with men in state government.

The narrowing wage gap, however, appears to have more to do with a changing workforce than with any wide-ranging salary adjustments for female employees.

Statistics provided to The Dispatch in response to a public-records request filed in January show that female state workers earned an average hourly wage of $24.14 last year - 86 cents, or 3.44 percent, less than men. That compares with a $1.44 difference, or 5.97 percent, in 2007.

Stephanie M. Loucka, head of human resources for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, said she can't pinpoint why the gender pay gap has narrowed. However, she said, as the state workforce shrank in recent years, its composition changed. Many older males retired or left state government, while "women stayed long and are making more money."

The non-university state workforce included 52,535 full- and part-time employees in 2013, a 16.3 percent overall decline from the 62,780 in 2007. Women made up 44 percent of all employees, a slight drop from 2007. The period analyzed bridged the last two administrations.

The hourly wage statistics are included in the Ohio Workforce Composition Report released yesterday. After discovering discrepancies in state data after The Dispatch asked for the reports, agency officials acknowledge they will have to resubmit previous biannual reports required by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because of mistakes unrelated to gender, including too many "unknown" race identifications and discrepancies in pay rates for a small number of boards.

Administrative Services officials said those issues are largely resolved.

A PowerPoint presentation prepared by the state agency noted that the hourly wage gap between male and female state workers had shrunk from $1.07 to 86 cents since Kasich took office at the beginning of 2011.

The data show that women in comparable jobs have not had higher pay raises than their male counterparts.

The pay-equity issue comes into better focus when looking at individual job categories.

For example, women made a big gain in administrative jobs, including agency directors and human resources, information technology and training supervisors. In that group, the pay gap shrank to 7 cents last year from $2.25 in 2007, the state report showed. There are about twice as many men and women in top jobs in state government.

Women also gained in professional jobs, such as engineer, teacher, software specialist and social worker, where women account for more than half the workforce. The salary gap last year was $2.44, a 19 percent drop from 2007.

However, women lost ground in some categories, including paraprofessionals such as dietitians, hospital aides, nurses and paralegals. There, the pay gap widened to $2.18 last year from $1.64 in 2007, a nearly 33 percent jump. They also slipped in pay equity in protective services (corrections and parole officers, Highway Patrol), and service maintenance (groundskeeper, high maintenance, housekeeping, building maintenance). Both categories are male-dominated.

In the office-clerical category - where women hold three of every four jobs - females earned slightly more than men every year since 2007.

The state released the full report and database yesterday. Highlights from the PowerPoint were shared with the Ohio Republican Party earlier after a party spokesman asked for information to help him respond to wage-related criticisms leveled by Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald. The party spokesman subsequently relayed those highlights to The Dispatch.

A Dispatch computer analysis published last Saturday showed that the gap between total state compensation for men over women had grown in the past three years. However, those totals reflected all types of personnel payments, including payouts for unused sick leave and vacation, as well as settlements stemming from employee disputes. For that analysis, the payouts were combined, then divided by the number of men and women receiving state funds. The resulting figures couldn't serve as a measure of actual hourly wages.

The new data show that women in comparable jobs have not had higher pay raises than their male counterparts.

Dispatch Public Affairs Editor Darrel Rowland contributed to this story.

ajohnson@dispatch.com

@ohioaj

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